As of Monday, August 21st, 2006 … Social Media Optimization (SMO) is now a term in Wikipedia. From it’s humble beginning as a blog post less than two weeks ago, it has been tough to keep up with all the activity from many smart folks that have added to the original 5 rules and taken the dialogue about SMO into the real world in panel discussions and industry events. Along the way, it was perhaps inevitable that the spread of SMO would become a case study of the power of social media to take an idea and give it a life of its own. For example, in the time that I have been tracking this idea, here are a few of the interesting signs of its life in social media:

These results show a strong life for the idea of SMO, but how good are these numbers? For anyone marketing with social media, optimization alone can set you up to become more visible – but the next challenge is bound to be how to measure it. If this were a marketing campaign, how would I judge success? Is something like a Social Media Score even possible? Just as SEO or SEM have evolved their success metrics and sophistication, SMO will need to have a separate criteria to help marketer’s claim success. This is the next frontier I hope to see some dialogue about on the New PR Wiki page. Getting SMO into Wikipedia is a great first step. Now SMO is living and breathing. As personal media continues to rise in relevance and influence – the need for SMO and related services will only become more apparent. In time I believe we will see SMO find its place in the overall marketing mix as a core expertise.

Featured Categories

My New Book:

Non-Obvious

Non-Obvious is my latest Wall Street Journal bestselling book about learning to use the power of curation to transform your business and predict the future. Learn More >>

About Rohit

About Rohit Bhargava

Rohit Bhargava is a trend curator, founder of the Influential Marketing Group, and the author of five best selling business books including Likeonomics (shortlisted for 2013 Best Sales/Marketing Book of the Year by 1800CEORead).